Avengers: Doomsday Was Rumored to Run 3 Hours and 45 Minutes

At the time of this piece, a runtime of 3 hours and 45 minutes was circulating online for Avengers: Doomsday, and I was here for it. It was only a rumor, but it came alongside reported details about Namor and Sue Storm, a Simu Liu interview many people misread, and two reports on Hayley Atwell.

I'll take each in turn, starting with that runtime and why I thought the length made sense for this film.

A rumored 3 hour 45 minute runtime for Avengers: Doomsday made sense to me

The runtime going around was reported, or more accurately rumored, at 3 hours and 45 minutes, which is almost four hours. For comparison, Avengers: Endgame ran a little over three hours. I couldn't remember whether it was 3 hours and 1 minute or 3 hours and 2 minutes, but either way, Doomsday would come in about 45 minutes longer than Endgame.

I've always joked that I wished Doomsday and Secret Wars would each be four hours long with an intermission in between. I doubted we would ever get intermissions again, but I liked the idea of a film close to four hours. Yes, it's long. But considering everything we had heard about the movie, including the scenes and characters covered below, there was so much happening that the length seemed logical. Marvel was bringing its whole history together here.

Look at Deadpool & Wolverine. Channing Tatum, who plays Gambit, said that what they did in that film, they would do in Avengers: Doomsday times 50. He was talking specifically about the section where Deadpool and Wolverine meet Elektra, Blade and Gambit, then go into the fight where all those returning villains appear. Those scenes times 50 is enormous. With everything that has to go into this movie, a runtime of 3 hours and 45 minutes does make sense.

The extra time could let Marvel make up for Doctor Doom

Some people were questioning whether Marvel should have made a two part film instead. One idea was a three hour Avengers: Doomsday followed by Secret Wars in two parts. Another was Avengers: Doomsday Part One and Part Two, followed by Secret Wars.

I was happy with the longer single film. I thought it meant they could take their time with Doom, which I think is important, because I think they have a lot to make up for when it comes to Doctor Doom. We need to learn his backstory. They need time to tell us who he is, and whether he has connections to a Reed Richards. That doesn't necessarily mean Pedro Pascal's Reed from the 828 universe, just a Reed in general.

If Doom was married to a variant of Sue Storm and had a son named Franklin, there is a great deal we would need to know about him. Then there are his parents, and his mother and her deal with Mephisto, and whether any of that makes it to the screen. With a runtime of almost four hours, they would have time to do all of that. That's why I was glad this rumor was out there, and why I hoped it would turn out to be true.

Namor and Sue Storm reportedly share extensive screen time

According to MyTimeToShineHello, Tenoch Huerta's Namor and Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm share extensive screen time in Avengers: Doomsday. If you don't know the comics, Namor is in love with Sue Storm. Apparently the two would spend time together in a desert scene.

That reminded me of an older report claiming the Fantastic Four would be split up. Reed Richards would be paired with the Human Torch, while Ben Grimm's Thing would be with Sue Storm. If that holds, Reed wouldn't seem to be there, which would explain the time Namor gets with Sue. I'm assuming he would see her, fall for her, and hit on her throughout the movie.

The fourth teaser trailer had shown Namor, and it did look like the Wakandans and the Talokans were working together to save the universe. Even so, I thought Namor might end up more of a villain than a hero, which is how it goes in the Secret Wars comics as well. We've seen his darker side before in Wakanda Forever, where he killed Queen Ramonda and other Wakandans.

My guess was that he would ride the line between good and bad, and that by the end he would turn out to be bad. That would probably mean a lot of him hitting on Sue Storm, maybe even trying to take her with him. Maybe the Thing would have to step in, or maybe we would get a Reed Richards and Namor fight, which I think would be cool. I liked that they were bringing key points from the comics into the MCU, and I think the Russo Brothers are very good at that.

Simu Liu's heated rivalry answer was part of a joke segment

Many people, I think, took a Simu Liu interview out of context and didn't understand what was happening in it. Simu Liu recently appeared on a sports show on Amazon Prime with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson. He was asked whether Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. would go full heated rivalry in Avengers: Doomsday, and he replied, "I mean, if it makes people watch the movie. Yeah."

The context matters. This came during a segment where statements were thrown at him, he gave an answer that could be real or fake, and the hosts tried to guess which. The next prompt, for example, said Spider-Man would be in the film and Uncle Ben would return, except it was Uncle Ben from the rice. Uncle Ben's is a rice brand. So you can see what they were doing. Simu Liu wasn't revealing anything major, though I wish he were.

There's another layer. Heated Rivalry is a show about two hockey players in a gay relationship, so going full heated rivalry was a joke built on that. That said, I do believe Marvel would market the rivalry between Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. heavily, and that it would be big in the movie. Captain America is going to be one of the main characters, and Doom is the main villain. It's all about Doom.

With 50 plus characters in the movie, there are many stars, but Steve Rogers' Captain America and Doctor Doom are two of the main ones. I wanted to clear that up because it seemed many people weren't getting it.

Hayley Atwell may get her biggest Avengers role, possibly as more than one character

Daniel RPK had two reports on Hayley Atwell. In the first, he said he heard she would have the biggest role she's ever had in an Avengers film with Doomsday, that she's not a cameo, and that she has a role throughout the movie. In a second report, he stated she was reportedly playing multiple characters.

My first thought was that she would play Peggy Carter and Captain Carter, the multiverse version from What If. I think that would be cool, because Captain Carter was great in the very last episode of the very last season of What If. Taking someone from an animated show into live action would showcase the multiverse side of this film very well.

On the biggest role claim, that's obvious in one sense, since she hasn't had a big role in an Avengers film before. She has had big roles in her own show and in the MCU generally, though. So for this to be her biggest, I think she will be integral, or at least part of the story. It made me feel we might get Captain Carter as almost a multiversal entity at this point.

I'm also curious what Steve Rogers would say to her: she's his wife, but she's not his wife. I think the whole variant concept will be interesting, because of how many characters will react to it. We already had the Spider-Man meme. Some variants look exactly alike, Spider-Man being the example, while others look very different, and some are the opposite gender, like Loki and Sylvie.

I liked seeing her as Captain Carter in Multiverse of Madness, but I didn't like how quickly the Illuminati got destroyed, and I don't think anybody did. They were supposed to be the strongest heroes of that universe, and even though the Scarlet Witch was probably the strongest character in all the universe at the time, they died very quickly. For Hayley Atwell to get a redemption as Captain Carter and maybe play a bigger part in the multiverse story, I'm excited.